La bibliothèque retrouvée

In March 1945, the Red Army entered Pomerania. Two hundred kilometers northeast of Berlin, the immense library of Plathe Castle, a treasure of several generations, vanished across ruined Europe. Seven decades later, Vanessa de Senarclens welcomed into her office a chest of drawers belonging to her in-laws: a catalog listing sixteen thousand works, including a clandestine volume by Voltaire, an Aristotle prefaced by Erasmus, and the flowers of Maria Sybilla Merian. It was the lost library of Pomerania. Armed with a solid background as a historian and a saving sense of humor, the investigator decided to retrace its trajectory. She paints a portrait of those who founded, preserved, and enriched it, from the Prussian Enlightenment to the horrors of Nazism. By also questioning the last witnesses of the intact collection and the silence that was imposed after the war, this book bets that a story can transmit even what has disappeared. Born in 1968 in Geneva, Vanessa de Senarclens has lived in Berlin since 1996, where she teaches French literature at Humboldt University. With "The Library Found, an Investigation," she escapes for the first time from academic paths and finds her voice at the border between literary narrative and essay.